Friday, October 19, 2012

About four weeks ago I came home drunk. The sort of drunk that makes the recollection of details near impossible. I had recently been rejected by my long time crush (another story), and I was talking with a friend about a mutual friend and his hookups. My self esteem was low, my defenses were token, and it came out that the mutual friend had hooked up with one of the Korean teachers at my school. My crush is a Korean teacher. My liquor sodden brain came to the sudden realization that however unlikely it is that she is the one, it was possible that this mutual friend had hooked up with my crush - who had recently rejected me. I pressed my friend for information. Who was it? Not that it matters at all, and the mutual friend isn't here anymore, but, really. Who? It's OK to tell me.

He wouldn't, and I managed to keep my composure long enough to say goodbye.

In my apartment I collapsed into jealous rage, just controlled enough to keep me from screaming. After pacing and talking out loud for a few minutes, trying desperately to throw the drunkenness off so I could manage my emotions comfortably, I turned to my previously most successful therapist. Writing. I decided not to limit myself, not to worry about punctuation or clarity, just to get my thoughts out and see what came out.

While most of it was just rehashing of things I had already said to myself in the past or descriptions of sexuality designed to incite me, while simultaneously chastising myself for permitting myself the weakness of jealousy, (Sidenote: Jealousy to me is a feeling of ownership and right. You cannot have ownership of a human being or their time, you cannot by right expect a behavior or action from another person, and that is jealousy.) there was one particularly insightful section that I wrote.

Here it is, errors preserved with names altered:

And
the thing that kills me is that it’s entirely possibl that it’s (my crush). I don’t give a shit if it’s any other
teacher, but(my crush) would destroy me. If I
accept it as truth, which I can’t at this moment because there is no evidence,
it would mean admitting that there is no excuse for me to hide behind in (my crush) not wanting to kiss me. None
whatsoever. It isn’t because she’s Korean
and prudish, because she fucked one of the other foreigners (so even if she is
prudish, she made an exception which was not me which is also insulting). It means that she wasn’t just delaying a
possibility...
If I accept as truth that this woman who rejected me hooked up with somebody else, somebody close to me socially (or not), then I have nothing to hide behind.

How profound a realization. I had thought of a hundred reasons why she may have said no. I had analyzed it from a dozen different angles, I had tried to think of it only as a factual interaction (I asked, she said no), but the truth was staring me in the face. If she had hooked up with another person (any other person, ever), then I had no excuse to hide behind for her rejection of me.

Every thought regarding the interaction was a barrier I threw up between myself and reality. The reality that she just doesn't want me the way I want her. The reality that I would feel a serious decline in self worth if it were true that there were no extenuating circumstance to her rejection of my advances. That it wasn't the method of the advances she was rejecting, their timing, or even the situation they came during. But that she was rejecting me. The reality that I as a person was either incompatible with her, and she could see it and acted accordingly, or that I as a person was not enough for her to consider worthy. The reality that the choice and reasoning are hers, and no amount of tears or shaken fists gives me a right to demand an alternative.

In order to avoid all of this I put up every conceivable barrier. I asked advice from male and female friends. I searched for every available escape from reality and eventually chalked it up to my inability to know the truth. Where this brought me was proper, considering my actions and thoughts. Drunk, needy, alone, wallowing in self pity.

She rejected me. The proper response is action, not rationalization and analysis. If I still want her, I can invest in myself and work my hardest to become worthy both in my own eyes and hers. If I decide I do not want her, then I can move on. These are the only proper actions I can take.